Long Island Unity Fund

The Long Island Unity Fund (Unity Fund) is a funding collaborative created by and for Long Island organizations to determine where infrastructure needs to be built and how power should be ceded, particularly for the diverse tapestry of people that call it home. 

The Unity Fund operates with the belief that successful regional, state, national, and cultural change depends on “bottom-up” engagement with and investments in the capacity, interconnectivity, and sustainability of local grassroots groups, particularly but not exclusively in communities of color. Such power-building work—especially in a place as racially segregated, politically fragmented, and geographically diverse as Long Island—depends on breaking down barriers between groups while at the same time respecting their unique identities and localities. As a community-led initiative, The Unity Fund redistributes resources and decision-making power to those most affected by unjust policies and practices, building a united and equitable Long Island that works for everyone.  

The needs of local organizers outweigh available resources on Long Island. The New York Community Trust Long Island, Unbound Philanthropy, and J.M. Kaplan Fund convened a series of conversations with grantees and community partners as a major social justice funder in the region approached its spend-down date to discuss Long Island’s growing significance in state and national work, as well as its most pressing needs. 

In 2020, regional and national funders, along with nine community organizations, came together to form the Long Island Unity Fund— a cross-issue, region-wide collaborative and participatory grantmaking fund. The Unity Fund is the first participatory grantmaking initiative in the region. It’s informed by the practices of initiatives like the North Star Fund, Amplify Fund, PA is Ready!, and the Brooklyn Community Foundation. The Unity Fund has distributed nearly $1 million in grants since its founding to sustain the people power of directly impacted individuals, expand organizational capacity, increase leadership development and coalition building opportunities, strengthen local organizing infrastructure, connect immigration groups, and identify future opportunities to expand social justice work on Long Island.

In 2024, the Unity Fund launched the We Are Long Island (WALI) organizing hub, following a two-year period of collaboration with a coalition of seventeen organizations across Long Island. The outcome was a shared narrative strategy, movement incubator,  and participatory grantmaking mechanism that protects the most vulnerable and resilient organizations. 

Through WALI, the Unity Fund advances both short-term and long-term community organizing investments, providing a space for connection, learning, and collective action. The Long Island Unity Fund not only distributes grants, but it’s also building a unified, powerful movement for lasting change on Long Island.

Collaborative goals:

• Support region-wide social justice, social service, and civic engagement efforts on Long Island, with a focus on enhancing the infrastructure, leadership, and capacity of grassroots community-based organizations.
• Increase broad-based and coordinated grassroots engagement with and leadership of local, regional, and statewide policy, and culture change, including with respect to both the passage and the implementation of progressive local and state legislation.
• Strengthen links between grassroots groups on Long Island, their counterparts in other regions of New York, and statewide organizations and campaigns.
• Contribute to transforming the relationship between institutional philanthropy and community organizations by shifting the power to allocate resources.
• Expand foundation and individual donor connections to support this vital work

Peer Groups

• Gender Equality NY
• Long Island Jobs with Justice
• Padoquohan Medicine Lodge/ Metoac Indigenous Collective
• STRONG Youth
• Women’s Diversity Network

Funding Partners

• Engage NY
• JM Kaplan Fund
• Long Island Unitarian Universalist Fund
• Mertz Gilmore Foundation
• The New York Community Trust
• Scherman Foundation
• Unbound Philanthropy
• W.K.Kellogg Foundation